Cows—certain types ofbovinae—can evoke strong emotions among peo-ple, different emotions rooted in different worldviews. One worldview,which is arguably a galaxy of worldviews emerging over centuries in India,has come to be called “Hindu.” Some people who identify themselvesas Hindus have strong feelings about cows—feelings that tie into theirsense of conviction that cows are not just…
What is spirituality? What is the relationship between spirituality and religion? Are they inseparable or just coincidentally connected? Does spirituality need a reference to God or is true spirituality perhaps only possible without religion? How do different forms of spirituality affect the lives of individuals and society? This book is dedicated to these questions and thus comprehensively exp…
Ramon Harvey revisits the Muslim theologian Ab? Man??r al-M?tur?d? (d. 333/944) from Samarqand and puts his system, and that of the M?tur?d? school, into lively dialogue with modern thought.Combining rigorous study of Arabic M?tur?d? texts with insights from Husserl’s phenomenology and analytic theology, Harvey explores themes from epistemology and metaphysics to the nature of God and specifi…
No Church is monolithic—this is the preliminary premise of this volume on the public place of religion in a representative number of post-communist countries. The studies confirm that within any religious organization we can expect to find fissures, factions, theological or ideological quarrels, and perhaps even competing interest groups, such as missionary workers, regular clergy versus secu…
These lines constitute the beginning and end of a letter, written on papyrus in a dialect of the Coptic Egyptian language and dating to the middle of the fourth century CE.2 The letter would not have been known today had it not been discovered by excavators at Ismant el-Kharab, now a sand-covered ruin in an oasis west in Egypt, once a prosperous…
Papyrus letters seem to convey close and personal information, directly from the mouth (or the pen) of an ancient author. Piene’s letter to his mother Maria accentuates a vivid sense of proximity and similarity. A boy, traveling far away from his mother, expresses his affection for her in a most elegant manner. How different is he from you and me?Intimate as it may feel, this passage may also…
The Viennese Jesuit astronomer Maximilian Hell was a nodal figure in the eighteenth-century circulation of knowledge. This study of his career sheds light on the Enlightenment, Catholicism, reform in the Habsburg monarchy, and the cultivation of science in the Republic of Letters. Readership: Anyone interested in eighteenth-century Central Europe and Scandinavia, in the production and circulati…
As the first comprehensive work to assemble ideas, concepts, discourses, and extensive essays in this vital area, the Encyclopedia of African Religion explores such topics as deities and divinities, the nature of humanity, the end of life, the conquest of fear, and the quest for attainment of harmony with nature and other humans. Editors Molefi Kete Asante and Ama Mazama include nearly 500 entr…
It was late morning in May 2014, and I was sitting on the sofa in the lobby of a Radisson Blu Hotel. The sliding doors of the hotel opened onto a typical, international hotel lobby with marbled floors, a series of lifts, a spiralling staircase and clusters of small, hard, colourful square-shaped sofas and arm-chairs. If you could only see the lobby, and not the street outside, you would not hav…
"Paganism" is an evocative word that even today conjures up deep-seated emotions and prejudices. Until recently, it was primarily a derogatory term used by Christians to describe the non-Christian cultures vanquished by their churches. For some it evokes images of sacrifice and barbaric behavior, while for others it symbolizes a peace-loving, nature-worshipping spiritual relationship with the e…